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This is something that turned up from a guy called Kevin I was talking to extensively about all things CD-i at the ClassicGaming EXPO this year. He found a current (at the time!) SONY employee who was demonstrating a SONY Portable CD-i Player which had Digital Video capabilities. This was in prototype form and was intended for the professional market much as the base case machine was marketed for with it's high price tag!!

Kevin offered to buy the prototype but it was only for demonstration purposes and the SONY employee was resolute that it was SONY property that could not be sold. Kevin certainly knew his CD-i very well in our discussions so i'm confident this information is accurate. Anybody ever hear of such a unit built by SONY?

*edit* Oops, forget it. Just noticed you mentioned FMV capabilities.... not on those we had.

Neko

That would have been a Sony IVO-10 or IVO-11 then? ICDIA has a picture here.

cdifan wrote:That would have been a Sony IVO-10 or IVO-11 then? ICDIA has a picture here.

Yeap but with DVC capabilities, the only models SONY released were base case types with no DVC!!

Yeah, those are the #%%@#$... They always were a pain to test discs on, and because they gave so many errors, we just tested if discs started up, played the bumper and went to the menu. If they did, test passed

Neko

KuroNeko wrote:Yeah, those are the #%%@#$... They always were a pain to test discs on, and because they gave so many errors, we just tested if discs started up, played the bumper and went to the menu. If they did, test passed

Neko

who are you?

I remember getting a bugreport on one of these, and it was in considerable detail. Must have been before you dropped them...

We had to fiddle mightily to debug it; the stupid @*@#* thing wouldn't accept the "standard" serial download protocol we used for consumer player debugging (and now happily (ab)used by CD-i Link). Meant burning lots of testdiscs...

who are you?

Mystery Neko... hope you don't mind if I don't give my realname.

Used to work on CDi testing at Philips Interactive Media Centre in Hasselt, Belgium.

Literally sat thousands of hours in front of CDi players hooked to Philips 8833 14" monitors. Ruined my eyes

Long time ago though, so don't kill me if I don't remember all details and game solutions

Kinda funny " Burn Cycle activated" under my name here... I played that title from the first testversion til the release, then had to do it all over for the PC version. Kinda sick of it

Neko

cdifan wrote:I remember getting a bugreport on one of these, and it was in considerable detail. Must have been before you dropped them...

We had to fiddle mightily to debug it; the stupid @*@#* thing wouldn't accept the "standard" serial download protocol we used for consumer player debugging (and now happily (ab)used by CD-i Link). Meant burning lots of testdiscs...

*grin* true, one of them, the "10" I think, was dropped and never recovered from the shock.

But at a certain point, it was no longer feasible to test all players at the same level. So we started testing based on what players were most present in the market. 605's were only used for compatibility testing with odd memory settings and the like (and one setup for safety area check IIIRC),... Sony's were in the end dropped entirely from the list, as were the old Philips portables.

Combinations with cartridges also was cut down - there were know problems with some combinations (some board revisions and AH01 and AH02 or was it with AH03 and not with the older 2, I forgot) as those produced green flashes on all titles anyway.

Neko

KuroNeko wrote: Mystery Neko... hope you don't mind if I don't give my realname.

Too late . But welcome on the forums.

Thanks. Just found this place, when I bumped into a message on the CDI emulator. Quite a nostalgic trip

Neko